The Man Who Loved Children (38 page)

“I’ll get you an assistant,” said Sam, though he was cutting expenses as much as possible himself in order to take as much money home as possible to clean up accounts at home and pay for the new baby that was coming. Sam himself had urged Willets as subtly as he could to get through the work and sail for home, for he wanted above all to be there when the baby came. He also felt himself on the verge of a physical breakdown. Wan Hoe merely asked for a holiday of one day, “Only one day, sir, please!”

Sam sighed, “All right. Wan Hoe, though I can’t really spare you.”

But Wan Hoe took two days and on the day following, Sam found a note that had been left mysteriously on his desk;

DEAR SIR,

Please find it in your kind heart to forgive me. I had to run away. I am in trouble. Do not be angry with me. I could not help it. You were right about the moneylenders; but I was unable to take your advice. When we came back from Port Swettenham I found everything had come out into the open; and for several days I have been trying to avoid this shameful expedient. A disgraced man in hiding.

It was in Wan Hoe’s fluent handwriting but not signed. The same day the police called to apprehend Wan Hoe who was wanted for immense sums owed to moneylenders and for a relatively small sum embezzled through someone in the treasurer’s office. Sam, who usually hid nothing and who regarded the police as his friends, good, stout fellows with a difficult job, acted on impulse, gave terse replies, and concealed the note. The loss of Wan Hoe struck him down. There were thousands of notes scattered about the office in good order which Wan Hoe had read, but not Sam: it would be torture for Sam, with his headaches and bloodshot eyes, to try to get through them here. He was obliged to go to Colonel Willets and say that his section of the report would be turned in later, either on board ship or in Washington. This default pleased the Colonel greatly.

When Sam took his walks at night, he kept seeing Wan Hoe, it seemed to him. Whenever he saw the police taking up a man, he was afraid it was he. He saw many a Chinese with Wan Hoe’s pleasant, sensual face and even spoke to one, but in error. Where was he hiding? Was he rotting in some shameful cell, without help? Sam tossed far into the night, thinking of Wan Hoe and discreetly made inquiries about him in the daytime, but nothing came to his ears. He was questioned by several seniors about Wan Hoe’s behavior and political ideas and also was politely interviewed by the chief of police, but he replied that he knew Wan Hoe was a Chinese patriot, nothing more; he assumed every man was for his country as he, Pollit, was for his. Wan Hoe was the best secretary that ever lived since the world began. And when they suggested that Wan Hoe had gone off on the spree, Sam’s hackles rose; it was a personal insult.

Just as Sam was packing up the last of his folios and manuscripts, he received anonymously a small, scented, and carved chest, seven inches by five by four, containing six teacups not much larger than eggcups. Each cup was of six segments of carved chocolate wood and was lined with pure Straits silver, so soft that it was easily dented with the fingernail. The box opened out as a cabinet, and the cups stood on two shelves. The following day he received an invitation to take an assistant professorship of ichthyology at Hangkow University. He then understood that both these things came from Wan Hoe’s brother, a professor in Hangkow and also a Chinese patriot, and that Wan Hoe was safe. Sam was as joyful as if the message had come from heaven on silver wings. But he wrote back to the University a characteristic letter in his fat civil-service phrases:

DEAR SIRS,

I am deeply honored and gratified by your letter of the 20th ultimo and your very kind offer. I wish to assure you that nothing would please me better than to be able to accept it and that it is with very deep regret indeed that I find myself obliged to send you a refusal. If I were able to proceed to the post, I should be gratifying a lifelong wish of mine to study at close quarters a people I have much admired, whose philosophy I find so much more exalted than our own in many ways. I would willingly be one more of the too few links between your people and our own and try to advance in my minor way the Pan-Pacific Comity of Nations. Your great country liberated, Malaya enlightened, the United States more Pacific-minded and a great Empire more deeply aware of its responsibilities in the Pacific—this is what I have worked for all my life and this is what I still hope to see in my lifetime.

What feasible excuse can I offer? One that you will, I trust, understand. I am the father of six small children, whom I love deeply and whose health I am afraid would suffer in these latitudes. If they were older I could move them here, but at present I could not dare to do so. Nor do I want them brought up in a distant land, much as I hope they will be citizens of the world, for I wish them to be American patriots in exactly the same degree as your own fervent, admirable patriotic young men of the new China. This is my only reason for refusing your kind offer.

Believe me to be,

Sirs, Respectfully yours,

SAMUEL C. POLLIT

After sending off this letter, Sam had little more to do but to pack his things, get the curios he had had his eye on for months and have them shipped, soothe old man Willets and fight with him every day, help him with his packing, say farewell to Bargong, his “gunner” from the launch, Naden, his Indian secretary, Teo Mah Seong, a self-taught naturalist, Teochiew Chinese, in whose workshop he had spent many hours, and get to the boat at the last minute.

“God damn it, I thought you had decided to stay behind with those darkies,” said Willets. “I’ve been sending messages to you for an hour. Lady Modore was here, did you see her? Well, she only drove down to give me a message for a friend. She didn’t ask after you, Pollit.”

“And I didn’t ask after her,” Sam said, nettled. “It took me a long time to say good-by to all my friends and leave my presents for them, and get my presents
from
them.” He grinned wickedly at Colonel Willets who replied, “You’d better put the presents in your report!”

Sam turned away to take a lingering look at Singapore, hoping never to forget this eleven-o’clock view, the hills with Government House beyond the city, the long bund, the crowded native craft and the steamers and warships sharing the famous crescent. Beyond were brilliant green islets and jetties with water in every direction, the long, low shoulders sloping towards the town and huts on piers standing in the water. The ship was gorgeous as ships can be in the tropics, with decks, walls, and every object radiating heat and light, the women in colored dresses of semi-transparent stuff or white tropical weaves, handkerchiefs on their heads and waists, and everyone bustling and gay, glad to be going, excited by the Singapore stop.

“I loved the place,” said Sam to Branders, one of the artists of the Expedition, “but never again. She is the Queen of Sheba, but she is too much for me.”

“Here we are between the Gulf of Siam and the Bay of Bengal, with everything to see, and we have to go back to the Potomac: it’s pretty flat, isn’t it? Well, life’s long. We’ll all come back perhaps. How about a shandy?”

“I’ll take a lemonade,” said Sam.

J
O GOT TO TOHOGA PLACE
late. The Pollits were scattered all over the house and grounds. For five minutes the sunroom was the scene of straw-colored fireworks. Jo threw down her flowers, chocolates, her, hat, while the others started to pour in around her, through doors and long, open French windows, and exclaimed, “Where’s Sam? I want to give him a big hug! Where’s my baby brother? Where is he, where is he, where is he? Tell him I’m here! Tell him Jo is here! Tell him Jo the Jolly Sailor has brought him his chocs! Where is he?”

With a rhinoceros bound, she burst out of the circle, looking for Sam, shouting for Sam. She bounded all over the place. She was a Golden Horde by herself. When she found Sam beside the snakes’ cage, she fell on his neck,

“Old boy! Samivel! It’s himself! If I could have got to the train I would have, Sam! What have you been doing to yourself? You lost weight! I cut out your picture in the paper and put it up in the kindergarten! You should have seen their little faces when I told them it was my brother! I’m proud of you, I say it who shouldn’t. Father, tell that boy to stop it! Stop it, Sam, stop it! You’re putting us all in the shade! Hooray, hooray: he’s famous. He’s a great man. How are you, Samivel?”

“Easy, easy, old girl!” said Sam, weeping a little, “don’t be a fool, Jo! Easy, old girl! Dry those tears. There were others there besides myself, strange as that may seem to a big sister! I ain’t the only white-haired boy in the days of the sun! Hooray yourself! Hooray for Jo!”

“You lummocks, you dumbbell,” said Jo, wiping her eyes.

“Nary a lummocks,” said Sam, “nary a lummocks! Where is the rest of the reception committee? How many more is a-goin’ to fall weepin bitterly on my neck! Oh, these are too much! This is some doin’s! Femaile, sez I, go home to your wife and chilluns, ef you hev sich! Weep not, fair made, it is but a slight contree-temps!”

“Fool!” cried Jo sniffing.

“So you went and missed me?” inquired Sam.

“Why not?” demanded Jo.

“There’s a law saying no big yaller-haired cornstalks kin miss their little brothers,” said Sam.

“You know Brownell’s brother is Inspector now?” cried Jo. “That man you detest in the Department? He’s forged ahead. He’s a nice man. He came round last week and that Gray woman made up to him shamefully, to try and get that position. She sat up all night making a picture of Rumpelstiltskin and she signed it! ‘Rembrandt’! She signs her charts too! A Leonardo in the kindergarten. Myrtle Gray! Hff! The Catholics help each other; it’s a state within the state. It’s a disgrace. Everyone is furious. A teacher wrote God with a small
g,
and she reported her! Not that I’m for atheists, but we don’t want any Rome-controlled delators! Spying and snooping, with the priests behind her back. He complimented me and said, ‘I enjoyed the lesson very much, Miss Pollit.’ I could see he was favorably impressed. In the playground he came up to me and started making vague remarks—I could see he was hinting. So I up and told him what I thought about the Gray woman. Someone has to speak out! I said to him bluntly, ‘I don’t like sectarianism in the schools. I never did, I never shall. It’s against my principles and it’s against the Constitution. It’s against the law. But there are some’ (I said) ‘that have a law higher than the law. Anyone whose political or religious capital is outside the U.S.A.’ ”

Sam had meantime sat down on the grass bank and was laughing languidly and pulling away at the rank weeds, “All right, Jo, all right: O.K., old girl, cool off!”

“Cool off,” cried Jo, tossing her head. “What for?”

“Dear old Jo, on the same old warpath,” said Sam.

“I prefer a hot head to cold feet,” said Jo. She went on with her story. In the meantime, sounds of cheer came from the house where everyone was helping Jinny, Sam’s sister-in-law, and Louie and Hazel decorate the place and get ready for the banquet to which they would sit down at six o’clock. Bonnie was there, not herself, a little sad and quiet, with a thin face. She was staying with Jinny in Baltimore and helping in the house. But Bonnie, after quietly embracing and weeping over Sam, had gone back to work for his party, just the same, and she was at present tasting her Badminton Cup, her own secret specialty, for which dear Lennie, her brother, had brought three bottles of claret and one of curaçao. As all Sam’s parties hitherto had been nonalcoholic, this was to be the great surprise of the day; for certainly, everyone argued, since Sam went abroad, he had learned to be more a man of the world, and he, at least, would never object.

Everyone noticed that Sam had changed greatly. He was more restrained: he did not complain and patted his children on the head with a wise, sad smile, more like an ordinary father than the eccentric he had been. He had been eight months amongst people of his own age and had conversed only with them, although he had made a few casual friends of eight to twelve, Chinese and Malays, schoolboys, sons of his Teochiew friend, the naturalist and of the curio dealer and all the boys of the villages. But his relation to these, since he did not speak to them freely, was that of a tribal uncle, something of the older generation.

The children were gamboling all around their father, and as Jo’s story went on, rising and falling with the urgencies of the storm, he beckoned his Ernest (who had grown more thoughtful and distant and had fewer smiles than Ali Mahmoud, Sam’s friend in City Road, Singapore) and his twins, melancholy Little-Sam and thoughtful Saul, towards him. It had been a great day, this day of welcome, and they were glad to sink on the grassy bank and swell his humming,

And thar we see a swampin gun

Large as a log of maple

Upon a dandy little cart

A load for feyther’s caytle
…

Jo waited till they paused and sniffed good-humoredly, “Well, you’re too glad to see your Daddy back to think of me: it’s Father’s Day.”

She left them there, a handsome buttercup garland sprawled along the lawn. After a short silence, Sam raised his eyes from the depths of the orchard, where he had plunged them, drinking in through them the green and the blue, and he said wearily,

“You kids didn’t lose any dorsal vertebrae weeding the gardens while Dad-the-Bold was in furrin parts, did you?” Ernie defended himself, “The varmints wouldn’t work.” They defended themselves, “He never told us to.” Their father said miserably, as if to himself, “And the boiler wasn’t fixed up; and there’s no new boiler; and the possum died and a snake died. Nobuddy did nuffin. When Sam went away everybody just plain forgot him. ‘Near can I forgit the surblime speckticul which met my gase as I alited from the Staige with my umbreller and verlise.’ [Artemus Ward: The Atlantic Cable.] Weeds, springing up everywhere, the paths cracked and our hanni-miles dead.” He did not even laugh; just went on sadly recounting to himself the default. The boys sat round with him, as miserable as himself. In all the wild, vacant months that had passed, like a stupid, shouting, windy holiday, they had never given one thought to their father’s schemes and ideas. It had been nothing but Little-Sam’s and Saul’s and Ernie’s ideas, a great savanna of opportunity in which they stumbled, ranged, hallooed, occasionally catching sight of each other, at intervals dreaming about a personage, genie of the swamp, who called himself Sam-the-Bold, their father, and was away, his wand broken.